The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

When systemwide dynamics arise unexpectedly out of the activities of individuals in a way that is not simply an aggregation of that behavior, the result is known as emergence.

Look at any business, talk to anyone you know, and you will see prudent, thoughtful actors. But look at the sum total of their actions, and sometimes it will seem without rhyme or reason, bordering on chaos. The sum of individually rational actions can be the genesis of a crisis.

emergent phenomena, ergodicity, radical uncertainty, and computational irreducibility.

novels as an event of adventure and social encounters.4

There is no formula that allows us to fast-forward to find out what the result will be. The world cannot be solved; it has to be lived.

The railroad was the disruptive technology. It reached into every aspect of industry, commerce, and daily life, a complex network emanating from the center of the largest cities to the remotest countryside. Railroads led to, in Karl Marx’s words, “the annihilation of space by time” and the “transformation of the product into a commodity.” A product